Louvre Heist Film Takes Shape With Romain Gavras Attached
The audacious daylight robbery at the Louvre is already moving into its next life on screen. A film about the theft, in which thieves escaped with $102 million in jewels from one of the world’s most visited museums, is being developed with French filmmaker Romain Gavras set to direct.
The project is based on Main Basse sur le Louvre (A Grab at the Louvre), a new book published Wednesday in France by Flammarion. Written by journalists from Le Parisien, Le Monde, and Paris Match, the book argues that art theft has evolved into a criminal business with its own logic and infrastructure. That framing gives the film a built-in tension: the heist is not being treated simply as a sensational caper, but as part of a larger economy of illicit trade.
Film rights were sold to Iconoclast, the production company behind several Harmony Korine films, including Spring Breakers and Aggro Dr1ft, as well as much of Gavras’s recent work. Iconoclast also produced The World is Yours and Athena, the latter a crime drama that played in competition at the Venice International Film Festival in 2022. Gavras has built a reputation for films that move between social unrest, genre energy, and political unease, which makes him a fitting choice for a story rooted in both spectacle and institutional vulnerability.
Little else has been announced about the film so far. Separate rights for a documentary series about the heist were also sold to an unnamed British producer, suggesting the Louvre robbery may generate more than one screen treatment.
Gavras’s schedule is already crowded. Netflix is set to release his latest film, Sacrifice, later this year. The action-comedy stars Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Evans, and Salma Hayek, and centers on a film star abducted by a radical cult that believes three lives must be taken to save humanity.
For now, the Louvre project remains in early development. Even so, its arrival underscores how quickly major art crimes can migrate from police files and newspaper headlines into the language of cinema.
